Neil Amonson travels to Germany to find solitude in his craft. Amonson says, “To actually experience all the things I’m feeling, I have to do it alone.” Get a look into the incredible experience Neil goes through as he sets out to accomplish this solo BASE jump.
Archive for the ‘Skydiving, Base Jumping, Hang gliding & Paragliding’ Category
Check out the final race from Red Bull Aces, a wingsuit slalom race at 8,000 feet above the ground. In the three-day competition in Cloverdale, Ca, four Americans (out of 40 athletes from 18 countries) made it to the final race. Andy Farrington, who also won the competition last year, was able to best Noah Bahnson, Matt Gerdes and Scott Palmer to take the victory. Red Bull Aces is the world’s first-ever wingsuit slalom competition, with athletes racing four at a time through a one mile-long course made of five 112-foot long gates suspended thousands of feet in the air. Athletes jump in heats of four from a civilian Bell Huey helicopter at an altitude of 8,000 feet above sea level, and must weave between five gates positioned at descending levels between 6,500 feet and 3,500 feet. The winner is based not only on how quickly the finish line is crossed, but also on how many gates he/she correctly passes through.
I keep getting the question, “You are 130 pilots racing together?! How do you manage to not crash into each other?” Here is the visual answer.
First 7 min is us waiting for the air start. The last half a minute or so, when we all go straight, that’s when the start time strikes, and we’re off on course.
Shot over beautiful Catalunia.
“Places To Go – A Jim Harris Story” is a short documentary film featuring photographer Jim Harris. After instructing wilderness mountaineering courses for seven years, Harris was hired for a photo shoot in 2011. Since then, he’s written about and photographed expeditions for National Geographic, Powder, Backpacker, Men’s Journal, and others. He found a niche shooting Type II Fun and wilderness trips in places like Mongolia, Bolivia and Antarctica, but he loves tromping around his home mountains in Utah.
In November 2014, Harris was practicing with a traction kite, which he was planning on using to pull him and his partners along windswept Patagonia on their skis, when a strong gust caught him and yanked him high into the air. Harris struggled to regain control of the kite. Instead, he accelerated towards the ground in a crushing fall left him with two broken vertebrae in his back, two more shattered, and the loss of feeling and movements in his lower body.
An outdoor community fundraising effort raised $107,750 for Harris’ medical evacuation, surgeries and rehabilitation. Once home, he was transferred to the spinal cord facility at Craig Hospital, a cutting-edge rehabilitation center in Englewood, Colo., for his most difficult expedition yet.
“Places To Go – A Jim Harris Story” picks up the story from here, following the once-active Harris, confined to a wheelchair, on an emotional and physical journey to get back the life and feeling he lost in a few tragic moments in South America.
The film will be released in Fall 2015.